ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the principles of the New Humanism. It claims, undermines the humanistic tradition going back to ancient Greece. Standards that create human significance and a principle of unity that measures manifoldness and change surrender to vital impulse. In opposing the modern movement, Babbitt singles out Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "To debate Rousseau is really to debate the main issues of our contemporary life in literature, politics, education, and, above all, religion. Religion has suffered not only from the Rousseauist but also from the pseudo-scientist. There are utterances in Rousseau quite in line with traditional morality. Another American scholar has therefore set out to show that it is a mistake to make Rousseau responsible for a revolution in ethics. Practically, the warfare of the Rousseauistic crusader has been even less against institutions than against those who control and administer them—kings and priests in the earlier stages of the movement, capitalists in our own day.
